Proof

Kids do enjoy the simplest toys. That whole line about buying a kid a gift and they just play with the box? So true.The things that get the most bang for the buck entertainment-wise around our house are: Play-Doh, a bowl of beads, a bucket of dried pinto beans, and Q tips.

I've long since given in to the mixing of colors with the PD, and my life has gotten easier for it. I know that if I even need to buy some time for myself, and I don't want to just slap Mags in front of the tv, I can just throw out th magic phrase, and she'll go galluping over to her little table and start prying open the kid-sized tubs with her toddler claws. It's a good thing its so inexpensive, because she's not so good at the putting away of PD yet. Lots of dried PD turds lying about our house. Not to mention stuffed into Matchbox cars.

Oh sure, both the beans and the beads started out well organized and with lofty ambitions. I got her a generic bucket o' random beads with a couple of shoestrings thinking she'd string them together and make bracelets or something. Well, one lynched teddy bear later, the beads are used more for play cooking, being driven around in the back of toy trucks, and just scattered around the house in general. Mostly I think she just likes the texture. The pinto beans were just a way to get rid of a mostly unused $.99 bag that was gathering dust in my cabinet (and a step up hassle-wise form the rice I first let her play with.) These too end up scattered around the house, swelling and gumming up the drain after sitting in the bathtub dampness, or stuck to the bottom of your feet like permanent safety bumps.

How does that line go? Y'know, the one about best laid plans? The beans and beads went from having their own individual clear, closeable containers, down to sharing one closed container, to sharing a bowl on the shelf, to sharing a bowl on the floor, to laying out on a blanket for easy clean up. to never cleaned up, to festooning the entire floor of Mags' play area, to creeping out into the rest of the house. I need the vaccuum equivalent of a rideable lawn mower to pick all of these up. I don't really try so hard these days.

(Side story: today Mags put handfuls of her very own secret blend of beans/beads into her shopping cart to, well, I'm not sure, but she did. Unfortunately, the shopping cart is, not suprisingly, full of holes. Unfortunately, she did this over a heating vent. Too bad it wasn't popcorn.)

Her most recent novelty are Qtips. She has taken to grabbing handfuls of them out of the bathroom drawer, and doing random things with them, again in all areas of the house. They are cropping up in the strangest places: the toy box, kitchen counters, bedroom floor -- pretty much every place but where they belong. Maybe I should enforce some sort of boundary here -- this new habit seem to drive Husband nuts -- but again, they don't cost anything. And they hurt less to step on than the beads.

Through this all, there is a mound of plush beasts that tend to go unplayed with, blocks that grow bored, and a menagerie of other toys that really don't get the time of day unless another child dares to play with them. Her birthday is in April, and I'm realizing I don't really have to get her anything big and exciting. She's perfectly content to trace her hand on a piece of paper, or use the glue stick to adhere magazines directly to the table, or shove PD into a teapot.

Its just cute.